


and at once i knew i was not magnificent

by r1ker



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-09-30 19:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: i've cried for the last three hours





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i've cried for the last three hours

_Oh, Gaston._

Solid but small hands pick up the top half of his body from the brush it landed on. LeFou pulls Gaston onto his folded legs and puts his ear to the man's chest, a finger under his nose. What he hears is life barely hanging on, feels breath almost nonexistent, and sighs. He pulls open Gaston's shirt where it's already ripped deeply and sees shallow cuts and bruises but no bones protruding through skin, so they're not too far deep in the woods to not have a safe way out.

 

LeFou whistles through his thumb and forefinger pressed together, and a miserly old horse with a three-wheeled cart arrives shortly thereafter. "I'll get you out of here." The strength he uses to carefully place Gaston in the back of the cart is unbecoming of him, having never possessed the strength of the man he's tucking into the cargo space, but he powers through the burning of his muscles.

 

When he gets to the front and takes his place behind the horses, reins in his trembling hands, he doesn't know yet where they're going, but it's going to be far away from here. LeFou guides the horse on down winding roads with potholes and stones so large in them that each time they rock the carriage he winces for Gaston's sake. As for the patient he's blissfully knocked out and LeFou only knows he's breathing by the low noises of pain he lets out when the soles of his feet bump against the threshold of the cart.

 

Not far from the small provincial town Belle wasted no time in ruining for the both of them LeFou finds an old maid with really nothing to her name but several chickens and a blessed spare bedroom. He comes up with some cockamamie story about his friend injured by a rogue stallion in a stable they'd both gotten field hand work at and ushers Gaston in, supporting most of the man's weight with one arm around his waist and a hand on his belly.

 

The woman doesn't hover as LeFou tries to work what triage magic he's got left in him after a bumbling and clumsy childhood. What wounds he does get patched up are messy and leave Gaston looking more like a failed sewn doll rather than a battered young man, but as for the most part the bleeding has stopped, and they've never been superficially perfect to begin with. The water left in the basin that's not horribly overrun with Gaston's blood is used to hastily wash off his hands, and he sits at the head of the small cot Gaston lies across.

 

At this point, so late in the day, time spent preciously putting Gaston back together as best as he could, LeFou sighs where he sits. From his spot he can see Gaston coming back to himself, his eyelids flickering in his restless sleep, the uneven rise and fall of his chest as he breathes a bit more steadily than before. Vaguely he remembers when he was younger and had taken a header from a neighborhood boy's roof – playing there like a bunch of idiots, as they were wont to do – and woke up to his mother asleep at his bedside, one hand on his forehead.

 

So, he does the same. Not that he's in any way as healing as his mother once was but he figures it'll do him a world of good to have someone's touch, someone letting him know he's not alone, he's not dead, and there's a time somewhere in the future where he'll be alright again. His throat clicks when he swallows as it holds back just a few tears at the tilt of Gaston's head into his touch.

 

"You wake up from this," LeFou teases with his fingers raking Gaston's hair back from his forehead, mindful of the bandage keeping together a gash on his forehead. "I will make your life a living hell. For one, for trying to die on me." He laughs when Gaston just huffs a breath at that and slips further into unconsciousness.

 

LeFou leans down just enough to pull the tattered excuse for a blanket over Gaston's shoulders in an effort to fend off any dampness coming through the walls of the barren room. "You bleed too much. And you snore a lot. But you will have a story to tell about why you have this on your forehead. If I have to give you one myself."

 

His fingers brush over the sutures holding the skin together just above Gaston's eyebrow. "Maybe you shouldn't tell people you got it falling into a tree. I'll cover for you, say we were ensnared in some great battle of minds with a wolf ten times our sizes." The laugh he lets out is quiet but the swell of hope that forms against his will in his chest speaks for them both.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgive me i have so many other fics for them we're making this one short and sweet at two chapters

LeFou wakes early the next morning. At first he isn't quite aware of where he is, or why his neck aches so from where his arm has been tasked with holding his head up for hours. It all starts to click into place when he sees Gaston listlessly moving on the cot, no longer destitute. He's to Gaston's side in a second with a shushing sound on his lips and grounding hands to match.

 

"Alright, alright," he says with his hands urging Gaston to lie back down, when the panic bubbling up in his chest wants him to take off. The palm of his directly above where Gaston's chest bows into his breastbone can feel his fluttering heart and he winces in sympathy. His friend looks at him with confusion edged with the slightest bit of heartbreak. LeFou hasn't ever seen it before, and it's a few seconds more that he can muster up the courage to explain what's happened. "Took a spill there, didn't you?"

 

Gaston groans and shrugs LeFou's hands off of him in favor of surveying all of the injuries he's sustained, his head tilted up lazily. He flops back down onto the cot with a breathless laugh at just how much he's let himself go in the sake of chasing yet another woman. LeFou looks to make sure he hasn't torn anything back open from where he messily sewed the cuts back together. Fortunately, all is well, and LeFou tuts around the room in search of just about anything he could think of that Gaston could need. "LeFou, if you walk around this room enough, you'll wear a tread in it."

 

He gives LeFou a lazy smile and shuts his eyes as the last of many blankets is tucked around him. There's only brief silence after that as Gaston comes back to himself, asking many nonsense questions LeFou can only answer with _I don't know_ and _you must have gotten lucky_. Luck was about all Gaston had going for him once LeFou had gotten to him. That high a fall and that steep an angle…another inch or two and they wouldn't be sitting in this old room. "It would be foolish for me to ask if Belle and that…thing stayed together in the end after all."

 

"The 'thing' you speak of was actually a prince," LeFou explains, again setting with his legs crossed at Gaston's bedside. He's – successfully – resisting the urge to hold Gaston's hand where it lies above one of the blankets. Not so much for his own selfish want but for the sake of Gaston's sanity, to let him know there isn't anyone else that would have done this for him. LeFou doesn’t think he deserves some sort of medal for saving his life, but a kind word would be appreciated every once in a while. "And, to tell you the truth, it wasn't worth it. The 'it' being Belle, of course."

 

Gaston fails to feign his offense at LeFou's suspected treason. He pulls his other arm out from under the blanket and folds them across his chest. The muscles flex beneath the bandages and though LeFou knows a reprimand is coming he can't stop himself from watching the shift of fortified strength beneath Gaston's skin. "It must have been worth your while, to come back all that way for me and pull me out of the brush. Getting Belle's scraps, aren't you?"

 

LeFou swallows. He doesn't have to touch his face to know it's flushing hot, his cheeks warm just by sensation. Gaston might be what Belle left on the dining table but LeFou's never had a right meal in his life. "For the thorns I spent an hour pulling out of my socks afterwards and the ego I'm still working on healing, yes. I'd do it again tomorrow if I had to." Mainly for LeFou's tone Gaston gapes at him. "Truth be told, I was preparing to have to pull you out of that monster's jaws. Fortunately for me I just had to toss myself down a steep hill nearly a half-mile down and stop a family of starved deer from taking you in for Sunday dinner. Looking back on it, you have just a few things to thank me for after all of this."

 

Gaston's face changes, having met his match. Granted, the match used to cry when he got drunk and frequently threw up on account of that offending alcohol. He pulls himself up on one elbow as best as he can and gets close enough to LeFou's face so that he can see the flecks of hazel in his eyes. "I'd rather the deer have ate me than have to go back to that city wifeless."

 

At that LeFou's barrier breaks and his eyes threaten to spill over with unshed tears. He tries to steady his breathing, stop from all-out sobbing like he's wanted to for two days in the midst of this. But he falls forward, pulls Gaston by his hair even closer to him, and kisses him like he's just not been delegated to the lowest tier of respect. The backhanded slap he earns burns about as much as the feeling of Gaston's mouth against his.

 

LeFou sits back hard on his bottom after that and hasn't yet tended to his stinging cheek with a probing touch. Gaston looks like he's a pot close to boiling over. He sits on the edge with a tinge of regret to his lazy slouch forward, most of his weight resting on his healing hands. "I shouldn't have done that." Just the thought he sees the wrong in what he's done helps LeFou recover from the rejection enough to stand back up again.

 

"Come here. Come back down to me." LeFou kneels in front of him again with a response not unlike autopilot. They again lean forward to have that closeness back. The way Gaston tilts his head lets LeFou try this whole thing again. The kiss distracts them both enough to let them allow their hands to wander. LeFou swallows the noise Gaston makes when LeFou nestles his hand against Gaston's scalp, tugging slightly at his tangled hair. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Gaston kisses at his cheek, his jaw, and the side of his neck, ignoring the way his wounds ache at the bending of his body. If this is the smallest pain he has to endure for someone, so be it.


End file.
